OnAir posts can be authored by any Hub member. Hub editors designate Hub members as a co-author/curator of a post which gives the curator the ability to Add a Top News item; Make edits to a post; Record and convey member feedback; Moderate a post’s forum; and Conduct online interviews.

To curate a post, authors log into a Hub with their username and password and either select “Curate my posts” under the “Author” button or go to a specific post they are co-authoring and select the pencil icon located at the top of the post sidebar above the table of contents. See Terms of Service for curation guidelines.

Summary

Adding Top News Items

1. To add a Top News item to a post, authors (after logging in), click on the “Top News” button in the left column.

2. To determine where to place the item, hover over the far right area of the post until you see the plus icon that says “Add item”.

3. After selecting “Add items”, a set of entry fields will appear

4. Select the item type (e.g. video or article) you want to add from the drop down….

Curators can also add OnAir videos of recorded online events such as debates, town halls and forums. Your Hub editor will assist you and other US onAir members with the scheduling, promotion, production and editing of these events.

4. All item types require at minimum a “Title” and a “Source URL” (web link) to the item.

5. For videos that use a YouTube or Vimeo player, insert the link (source URL) at the top of the video. For other “shareable” videos, have the post’s editor add the video. When adding a video, it is recommended that curators add the source date and length of video.

6. When adding an article, in addition to the above actions, you must add some content e.g. a subtitle and two to three paragraphs from the article.

Possible sources for Top News items

PBS News Hour … Local PBS station e.g. VPM
Google search … Google News
Twitter feeds
Government and campaign websites
Local online papers (no subscription required) … e.g. States Newrooms like Virginia Mercury and MD Watch

How to make post edits

To make minor edits to a post, select the heading with the content you want to edit. Editing is very similar to editing a word document. To add formatted text, select the “W’ icon and paste in your content.

If you have any questions or want to make edits not discussed above, please contact your Hub editor.

How to respond to Hub feedback

Any Hub member can submit to the post curator a question (and suggest additions and edits to the post). The curator, if he or she deems that the content of the feedback meets the onAir curation guidelines, can insert the question into a post as well as convey questions to the politician or subject matter expert referenced in a post.

For politician posts, Hub members can also, if appropriate, send the curator an “endorsement” to be placed in the post.

To add an endorsement, select the “Add Q&A” button in the lower right corner then fill in the fields.

How to moderate a forum

All posts have “Open Discussion” as the default forum topic. Curators can add additional topics by selecting “Forum” button in the left column and giving their new topic a title with optional description.

Curators can also add cross-site topics.

How to conduct an online interview

Curators can conduct online video interviews of politicians and include the videos as Top News items as well as insert into other sections of a post. Politicians will have approx. one minute or less to answer questions.

US onAir Editors will assist curators with these interviews by:

Supporting the scheduling and recording of an interview through our Google Meet enterprise account (no limit on time and ability to livestream to 100,000 viewers)
Providing a list of standard general and issue focused questions that all candidates and representatives will be asked
Editing interviews into one minute segments for insertion into their About and Issues sections of the post

Below are some standard questions we like to ask all interviewees in addition to issue-related questions

Why did you get involved in politics?
What is your most significant accomplishment?
What is the most important new legislation you want to support?
How can the public get more engaged in and impact our democracy?

US onAir Network

Democracy onAir, the Virginia chartered nonpartisan nonprofit sponsoring this pilot Virginia onAir Hub, has launched the US onAir network of 50 state Hubs focused on elections and governance. The Virginia onAir Hub has been our pilot that we used to design and implement the other 49 state Hubs. Below is a link to the central United States onAir Hub which is being managed and curated by DC area college students.

US onAir Network: us.onair.cc

Any US resident can become a member of the US onAir Hub and any other state Hub by selecting the “Join” button at the upper right of each Hub. It’s free. Hub membership will enable you to participate in forum discussions about your elected representatives and candidates running for office, ask them questions and make suggestions, and give endorsements.

We look forward to continue development of this Virginia onAir Hub. We would like to express our appreciation to all those students, politicians, and Virginia residents who supported the development of this pilot state Hub with a special shoutout to Virginia Delegate David Bulova and GMU professors Jennifer Victor, Lourdes Fernandez, and Dieter Pfoser.

Summary

US onAir Network: us.onair.cc

Become an onAir Member

All that is required to be a Democracy onAir member is your first and last name, an email address, and your zip code.

Your real name and any other profile information will NOT be displayed unless you choose to do so. Your personal information is NOT shared with any other website or organization.

Summary

All that is required to be a Democracy onAir member is your first and last name, an email address, and your zip code.

Your real name and any other profile information will NOT be displayed unless you choose to do so. Your personal information is NOT shared with any other website or organization.

Membership form

More about onAir membership

OnAir membership will enable you to:

Give feedback to your representatives and their staffs, other politicians, and onAir Curators. You can ask questions, make suggestions, and give endorsements;
Host and coordinate onAir livestreamed Zoom events (aircasts) with Virginia onAir Producers:
Participate in aircasts as part of a Zoom audience;
Co-curate politician and issue posts;
Start and publicize your own VA onAir civic engagement projects

To learn more about this Hub’s features and the organizations supporting this Hub, go to this About US onAir Network post.

Your Hub activity is NOT tracked or shared. Simply visiting any US onAir network Hub also does not expose your identity publicly.

When you submit personal information to Virginia onAir for any purpose, your information will not be sold or shared with any third parties unless you give consent.

You also can, at any time, request that your information be deleted. Such requests will be honored within one business day.

Hub members must be a US resident and/or US Citizen and be 13 years or older.

Learn more about Democracy onAir’s “Privacy Policy”.

Privacy Policy

Your Hub activity is NOT tracked or shared. Simply visiting the Virginia onAir Hub also does not expose your identity publicly.

When you submit personal information to Virginia onAir for any purpose, your information will not be sold or shared with any third parties unless you give consent.

You also can, at any time, request that your information be deleted. Such requests will be honored within one business day.

To learn more about Virginia Elections Hub “Privacy Policy”, go to this post.

Become an Intern

Democracy onAir welcomes any US citizen to apply for an internship. We require a minimum commitment of 6 hours per week.

We have a special interest in working with undergraduate students majoring in government, communications, media, or a related field with a passion to improve democracy in the US. Students (and other US citizens) who want to intern with Democracy onAir this fall can submit their resume with an introductory email articulating why you are interested in being a Democracy onAir intern and include a link, if appropriate, to your relevant academic program (internship, capstone project, research project etc.) to: internships@onair.cc.

Summary

Democracy onAir welcomes any US citizen to apply for an internship. We require a minimum commitment of 6 hours per week.

ABOUT US ONAIR

To reinvigorate our imperiled democracy, US onAir is developing 50 curated, media rich online state governance and election Hubs and a central US Hub. We are supporting the US public to become more informed about and engaged in federal, state, and local politics while facilitating more civil and positive collaboration.

US onAir is a growing coalition of individuals and organizations creating a new kind of digital democracy network. Participation in US onAir is open to all US citizens and qualifying organizations. Democracy onAir, a nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit, is providing the technology, curation, and organizational support needed to establish a dynamic, evolving network.

To learn more about the US onAir network, go to this post with 2 minute introductory video.

WHY BECOME AN INTERN?

The primary internship benefits beyond helping to reinvigorate democracy are intended to be career-enhancing:

Visibility in your field; potential contact with thought leaders, organizations, and potential employers
Skill development in political communication, media, and other position-specific opportunities such as grant-writing, video editing, and team management
Interaction and networking with politicians and other nonprofit organizations
Career opportunities with Democracy onAir and US onAir coalition organizations
Potential for individualized projects and skill development

Internships are mostly self-directed with weekly online meetings. Since much of the internship work is done remotely, students are on an honor system as to the hours they report to us. Part-time interns do not receive any monetary compensation.

Opportunities

OnAir Content Curators

Key Responsibilities:

Content Curators are tasked with helping turn the Hub into a centralized source of information on local, state, and federal politics. Tasks could include one or more of the following:

Coordinating the curation of politician profiles, including their background, policy positions, and campaign finances
Moderate and contribute to online discussions regarding campaigns and politicians
Interview, video, and post interviews with candidates and politicians
Supporting the development of Democracy Squads in colleges and universities throughout Virginia

OnAir Media Producers & Moderators

Key Responsibilities:

Media interns are tasked with helping each Hub to become a rich source of video interviews, and livestreamed and recorded town halls, debates, and forums. Tasks could include one or more of the following:

Recording video interviews with politicians and other relevant events
Editing all video content and posting to our Vimeo channel and relevant posts on the hub.
Assist in creating and managing the OnAir streaming service
Assist in recruiting media interns
Make sure all team members have high quality featured images

Outreach Internship

None at the present time.

Business/Revenue Internship

None at the present time.

Become a Donor

If you are interested in creating a more trusted source of political information and more civil political discussions, donate to Democracy onAir.

Donations can made by any individual or foundation that wishes to support the mission of Democracy onAir. Donors can choose to support the entire organization or state Hub, as well as specific operations, such as a District and all the posts within it, an individual politician Post, or a specific Issue Post. Donations, at the donor’s request, can be displayed on the appropriate Hub with links to social networks and/or websites.. Anonymous donations are accepted as long as they are verified as US residents or US-based foundations with no foreign affiliations.

Democracy onAir was chartered in Virginia in 2018 and has obtained 510(c)(3) status. Checks or wire transfers are made out to Democracy onAir. All donations are tax deductible.

Summary

If you are interested in creating a more trusted source of political information and more civil political discussions, donate to Democracy onAir.

Democracy onAir was chartered in Virginia in 2018 and has obtained 510(c)(3) status. Checks or wire transfers are made out to Democracy onAir. All donations are tax deductible.

Become an Advocate

Advocates of various issues important to US residents will have an opportunity to contribute position papers, reviews, videos, and other types of content related to an issue. As premium members, they will be able to:

author new posts on issues
co-author existing posts on issues
contribute to curated overview posts on issues

Advocates can sign up through an existing organization or individually. Until our beta testing is completed, advocate memberships are currently only available upon request without charge.

Send requests to: Jessler Elvira at jessler.elvira@onair.cc

Summary

author new posts on issues
co-author existing posts on issues
contribute to curated overview posts on issues

Advocates can sign up through an existing organization or individually. Until our beta testing is completed, advocate memberships are currently only available upon request without charge.

Send requests to: Jessler Elvira at jessler.elvira@onair.cc

All content in this site is under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial license which permits content sharing and adaptation as long as proper attribution is given to its author(s) and is used for non-commercial purposes

Hub members must be a US resident and/or US Citizen and be 13 years or older.

Summary

Hub members must be a US resident and/or US Citizen and be 13 years or older.

Curation Guidelines

This post provides guidelines for how Virginia onAir determines the permissibility and impermissibility of speech and content on this Elections & Governance Hub. These principles are meant to encourage civil and honest discourse without allowing for harassment or threats to personal safety. In case of any questions or concerns, please contact our Executive Director Katlyn Weiser at katlyn.weiser@onair.cc .

Research-driven content: Our choice and priorities of content will be formed by research on current topics, interviews and polling on information relevant to our target audience, and internal discussion.
Full citation and credit: All included information will include source information and hyperlinks.
Respect and inclusivity. Our platform is meant to promote an open discourse about current politics that is open for all users with that common goal. Any user or content that infringes on that goal will be removed from the platform and disciplined.
Our takedown rules and guidelines will evolve as political discourse evolves. Our Curation Principles will undergo an annual review to ensure that they match the evolving nature of political discussion. All users will be fully notified of changes to the platform’s guidelines. Ad hoc reviews of rules and guidelines will also occur if needed, and Democracy onAir reserves the right to make case-by-case decisions if content does not fit cleanly into a category but nonetheless runs counter to our general principles.

Terms

1. Acceptance of Terms

By visiting the Virginia onAir Hub (referred to as “Hub”) website or mobile application, viewing, accessing or otherwise using any of the services or information created, collected, compiled or submitted to the Hub, you agree to be bound by the following Terms and Conditions of Service. If you do not want to be bound by our Terms your only option is not to visit, view or otherwise use the services of the Hub. You understand, agree and acknowledge that these Terms constitute a legally binding agreement.

2. Provision of Services

You agree and acknowledge that VEH is entitled to modify, improve or discontinue any of its services at its sole discretion and without notice to you even if it may result in you being prevented from accessing any information contained in it.

3. Proprietary Rights

Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited in the articles of the Hub are the property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these Hub articles under the Creative Commons-Non Commercial licensing scheme. The Hub cannot grant any rights to use any otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal property is at your own risk.

4. Disclaimer of Warranties

You understand and agree that your use of Hub is entirely at your own risk and that our services are provided “As Is” and “As Available”. The Hub does not make any express or implied warranties, endorsements or representations whatsoever as to the operation of the Hub website, information, content, materials, or products. This shall include, but not be limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and warranties that access to or use of the service will be uninterrupted or error-free or that defects in the service will be corrected.

5. Limitation of Liability

You understand and agree that the Hub and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates shall in no event be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or exemplary damages. This shall include, but not be limited to damages for loss of profits, business interruption, business reputation or goodwill, loss of programs or information or other intangible loss arising out of the use of or the inability to use the service, or information, or any permanent or temporary cessation of such service or access to information, or the deletion or corruption of any content or information, or the failure to store any content or information. The above limitation shall apply whether or not referred to as “VEH” has been advised of or should have been aware of the possibility of such damages. In jurisdictions where the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages is not allowed the liability of referred to as “VEH” is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.

6. External Content

The Hub may include hyperlinks to third-party content, advertising or websites. You acknowledge and agree that referred to as “Hub” is not responsible for and does not necessarily endorse any advertising, products or resource available from such resources or websites.

7. Jurisdiction

You expressly understand and agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the country, state, province or territory determined solely by referred to as “Hub” to resolve any legal matter arising from this agreement or related to your use of referred to as “Hub”. If the court of law having jurisdiction, rules that any provision of the agreement is invalid, then that provision will be removed from the Terms and the remaining Terms will continue to be valid.The referred to as “Hub” database is stored on a server in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal law. Laws in your country or jurisdiction may not protect or allow the same kinds of speech or distribution. referred to as “Hub” does not encourage the violation of any laws; and cannot be responsible for any violations of such laws, should you link to this domain or use, reproduce, or republish the information contained herein.

8. Legal Statements

There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained in an article touching on legal matters is true, correct or precise. Law varies from place to place and it evolves over time — sometimes quickly. Even if a statement made about the law is accurate, it may only be accurate in the jurisdiction of the person posting the information; as well, the law may have changed, been modified or overturned by subsequent development since the entry was made on Ballotpedia.The legal information provided on referred to as “Hub” is, at best, of a general nature and cannot substitute for the advice of a licensed professional, i.e., by a competent authority with specialised knowledge who can apply it to the particular circumstances of your case. Please contact a local bar association, law society or similar association of jurists in your legal jurisdiction to obtain a referral to a competent legal professional if you do not have other means of contacting an attorney-at-law, lawyer, civil law notary, barrister or solicitor. Neither the individual contributors, system operators, developers, or sponsors of referred to as “Hub” nor anyone else connected to referred to as “Hub” can take any responsibility for the results or consequences of any attempt to use or adopt any of the information or disinformation presented on this web site.Nothing on referred to as “VEH”should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a legal opinion or otherwise engage in the practice of law.

9. Entire Agreement

You understand and agree that the above Terms constitute the entire general agreement between you and referred to as “Hub”. You may be subject to additional Terms and conditions when you use, purchase or access other services, affiliate services or third-party content or material.

10. Changes to the Terms

The “Hub” reserves the right to modify these Terms from time to time at our sole discretion and without any notice. Changes to our Terms become effective on the date they are posted and your continued use of referred to as “Hub” after any changes to Terms will signify your agreement to be bound by them.

Simply visiting this Hub does not expose your identity publicly. When you submit to the your email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses for any purpose, that data will only be used by Democracy onAir, the non-profit organization that hosts the USA onAir Hubs. Democracy onAir will not sell your information.

You also can, at any time, request that your information be removed from the USA onAir system. Such requests will be honored within one business day.

Except where otherwise specified, all text added to the Hub is available for reuse under the Democracy onAir Terms of Use. This privacy policy was significantly helped by consulting the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy.

Summary

You also can, at any time, request that your information be removed from the USA onAir system. Such requests will be honored within one business day.

FOR HUB MEMBERS

When you edit any page on VAO, you are publishing a document. This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit as its author.

Security of information

There is no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers.

Deletion of content

Removing text from the Hub does not permanently delete it. In normal articles, anyone can look at a previous version and see what was there. If an article is “deleted”, any user with “administrator” access can see what was deleted. Information can be permanently deleted by those people with access to the servers, but there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to legal action.

Reasons for deletion include but are not limited to violation of copyright, content that does not belong in an Hub, content not verifiable in a reliable source, and unreferenced negative content in biographies of living persons.

Deletion of a Hub post removes the current version and all previous versions from view. Unlike page blanking, which can be performed (or reverted) by any user, deletion can be performed only by administrators. Administrators can also view deleted pages and reverse (“undelete”) any deletion. All such actions are logged.

Reasons for deletion

Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following:

Advertising or other spam.
Content that isn’t suitable.
Copyright infringement
The article is a duplicate of another

Images that are unused or obsolete.
Images that violate fair-use policy.
Inappropriate user pages
Inflammatory redirects

Self-promotion
Naked campaign advertising
Patent nonsense or gibberish
Vandalism that is not correctable

Cookies

The Virginia onAir Hub will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny this cookie, but you cannot log in without it. It will be deleted when you close your browser session.

More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your username (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don’t wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.).

Passwords

Many aspects of this Hub depend on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user’s edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly.

Private logging

Every time you visit a web page, you send a lot of information to the web server. Most web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other sites link to this one, and what web browsers people are using.

These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; the raw log data is NOT made public, and is normally discarded after about two weeks.

Here’s a sample from Wikipedia–which uses the same logging system as the Hub–of a log for one such page view:

64.164.82.142 - - [21/Oct/2003:02:03:19 +0000]
"GET /wiki/draft_privacy_policy HTTP/1.1" 200 18084
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_projects:Village_pump"
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5"

Log data may be examined by developers in the course of solving technical problems and in tracking down badly-behaved web spiders that overwhelm the site. IP addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network addresses of edits in investigating abuse of the site, including the suspected use of malicious “sockpuppets” (duplicate accounts where one person logs into Ballotpedia under different names), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the site.

Policy on release of data derived from page logs

It is the policy of VAO that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:

In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement
With permission of the affected user
To the chair of the owner of VEH, his/her legal counsel, or his/her designee, when necessary for investigation of complaints
Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues
Where the user has been vandalising articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers
Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of VAO, its users or the public

VEH policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above.

Creative Commons License

All content in this Hub is under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial license which permits content sharing and adaptation as long as proper attribution is given to its author(s) and is used for non-commercial purposes.

Summary

About

Source: Wikipedia

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

The Creative Commons license that Virginia onAir uses for all its content is Attribution- NonCommercial that permits content sharing and adaptation as long as proper attribution is given to its author(s) and is used for non-commercial purposes (see below for more details).

Creative Commons
Website: creativecommons.org
Email: info@creativecommons.org
Phone: 1-415-429-6753
Address: PO Box 1866 Mountain View, CA 94042

Key features

Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAdaptAttributionNonCommercialNotices:
(CC-BY-NC 4.0)
From Creative Commons website

You are free to:

copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
remix, transform, and build upon the material.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms:

You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
You may not use the material for commercial purposes. No additional restrictions
You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation. No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

CC-BY-NC websites

Some of the websites below also contain copyrighted content that can not be embedded in your post.

Some of the websites below allow for re-use in commercial sites. Usually when a website provides a sharing button that enables embedding the content in a post, the content will be covered by the CC-BY_NC license.

Below are some well known sites that provide for CC-BY-NC licensing. Most government related content will be covered by the CC-BY-NC license. The links below give you a more detail on how each of these popular sites approach copyrighted and Creative Commons content.

Wikipedia
Flickr
YouTube
Vimeo
TED
MIT Open Courseware